The Hiding Place, by Corrie ten Boom Research Paper

The Hiding Place, by Corrie ten Boom - Research Paper Example The Hiding Place, by Corrie ten Boom, with the assistance of Elizabeth and John Sherrill is a story of fear, faith, and miracles set within the truthful remembrance of World War II. In Haarlem, Holland, the ten Boom family is put into the position of occupation by the Germans in which they see the tragedy of their Jewish friends herded onto trucks and feel the need to act. Their father sets up a hidden room in their house in which they can help those who come to them to hide from being taken. Several emotional levels of experience are explored within the novel. The fear of being taken, the reaction to adjusting to terrifying living circumstances, and the fear that is ultimately a part of their lives after incarceration is explored through the events that take place. The faith of Corrie ten Boom that would go on to inspire others after her release is explored as she goes through horrific events and survives. As well, she tells the story of a series of miracles that helped her to live, despite the horrors that she witnessed. The story of Corrie ten Boom is defined by the belief in God that inspires her father to act in support of the Jewish members of his community that were in trouble and continues after they are captured and she experiences both loss and hope through the events that she attributes to miracles from God. The story begins in 1937 with the event of a celebration. Corrie is forty-five at the time, she and her sister having never married and living at home with their father who is a watchmaker. Corrie spends a good deal of time discussing her childhood and all the ways in which it summed up to her adult existence. Holland falls to the German invasion and her father, herself and her sister must make the choice as to whether or not to act in tandem with the resistance, or to ignore the plight of their fellow countrymen. They choose to act by hiding Jewish member of the community in a room that could be hidden. Eventually they are betrayed and incarcera ted, their father, who is in his eighties, dying within ten days of having been arrested. Corrie is ill when she is arrested and is put into solitary for an unknown period of time which might have been a month or more, isolated except for the hand that gives her food everyday. She finds ways to hold onto her faith, something coming to her aide whenever she felt that she could not withstand her circumstances for any longer. She writes in regard to the ‘company’ that she found â€Å"And I was not alone much longer: into my solitary cell came a small, busy black ant† (Ten Boom, Sherrill, & Sherrill, 2009, p. 165). The ant symbolizes provision, the creature a survivor through its ability to provide for its colony, just as Corrie finds in her faith a way to provide for her survival. Corrie and Betsie, her sister, are eventually reunited as they are sent to Vught Prison and the two are eventually sent to Ravensbruck. Ravensbruck was a concentration camp which was housi ng anywhere from 45,000 to 60,000 female prisoners in 1944 who were mostly political prisoners who had defied the Nazis during World War II (Albert-Lake & Litoff, 2006, p. xxi). In these walls, Corrie and Betsy faced horrors of the concentration camps, Betsie finally dying from her weakened condition from heart problems that had always plagued her. Corrie records many small miracles that helped her to survive during incarceration. There was a small vitamin bottle that was sneaked in to help to keep Betsy strong and the bottle never seemed to run out of pills. They had obtained a copy of the gospels, and while religious material was routinely confiscated, theirs was never taken